


putting out the stars

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: part of our belongings (bad things happen bingo) [2]
Category: Into the Night (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Flying, Gen, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:07:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25195918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: Sylvie has to shake off the last of her anxiety post-Brussels when they run into a storm on their second turn around the planet.
Series: part of our belongings (bad things happen bingo) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1873021
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	putting out the stars

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: I am _absolutely_ not a pilot and I apologize for errors 
> 
> written for the Bad Things Happen Bingo square: Caught in a Storm
> 
> this is sort of an AU, in which I ignore their fuel problem and have them take an extra turn around the Earth. because I can. 
> 
> enjoy!

_“He looked around; heavy clouds were putting out the stars. He leaned toward the earth, trying to see the village lights, shining like glowworms in the grass, but in those fields of darkness no light sparkled.”_

_\- Night Flight, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (trans. Stuart Gilbert)_

“There’s a storm.”

Mathieu glances over at her. “A storm?”

“Yes.” She zooms out, checking the extent of it on her radar. “Right over the airport.”

“How bad is it?”

“I…I don’t know.” The iPad doesn’t give her enough information, now that there’s no one on the ground to report updated conditions. They’re entirely reliant on radar and luck at this point. “I just know that there’s dense cloud cover. Looks like a good storm.”

Mathieu frowns. “That’s not ideal.”

“No,” Sylvie says. “It’s not.”

They had one blessedly normal landing after Sylvie’s solo performance in Brussels. They’d made it to a deserted airstrip in Northern Ireland. The weather was clear, the stars sparkling above them, and for once the aircraft performed exactly as it was meant to. It had in fact been one of the smoothest landing’s Sylvie had ever experienced, even though both of their hands had been shaking at the controls; hers from lingering nerves, his from weakness. But they managed to smoothly guide the aircraft down exactly on target, touching down precisely on the center line and stopping with plenty of runway to spare.

Even with the smoothness of the landing, it had taken Sylvie a moment to catch her breath, looking out over the dark, abandoned airport.

“Are you alright?” Mathieu asked when she didn’t move.

“Are you?” she responded in lieu of a real answer.

He cracked a feeble smile. “I’ll be fine. Eventually, I suppose.”

Sylvie took another deep breath, looking back out the windshield. “Me too. It’s just…”

“After a bad landing, it can be hard to get your confidence back.”

Sylvie laughed. “It was more than a bad landing.” She gets unsteadily to her feet. “Stay there. I’ll bring you some water after we refuel. Laura will probably want to check your hand.”

And she did indeed run into Laura and Horst just outside of the cockpit, heading back to check on Mathieu.

“Nice landing,” Horst said.

She grinned, easily covering the last of her shakiness with overconfidence. “Just lucky. It’s a beautiful night.”

Well. It was all one night now for them. But right now, it was beautiful.

It only follows that the next wouldn’t go as smoothly, not with how their luck has been.

The storm center looks like a monster, consuming everything in it’s path. Sylvie turns the map around, playing with the radar settings to try and get a sense of where it was going.

“I’d say we should call ahead to the airport to get the weather report, but…”

“All the meteorologists are dead. So. What do we do? Try to land in the storm or divert?” Mathieu sighs. “What’s our next option?”

“200 nautical miles, north-northeast. It will be cutting it really close.” She shows him the map.

“And we’ll be over the water for most of the last leg. It’s not like we can afford to ditch the plane.”

“That is an understatement,” Sylvie says, partially to cover her sudden nerves. _Get it together,_ she scolds herself. _It’s just a damn storm._

“Okay. We try to land. If the wind speeds are high when we’re close, we’ll reconsider.”

Sylvie nods. “Fine. We’ll keep an eye on it.” She studies the radar again. “Maybe it will disperse.”

“Maybe,” Mathieu agrees. “It will be fine,” he assures her. “It’s just a storm. We’ll pass the worst of it before we even have to descend.”

“Right. Just a storm.” Logically she knows it will just be a bumpy landing, nothing more. Nothing they can’t handle. But still, irrational nerves creep in.

For once, the flight is quiet. The others are asleep or at least keeping to themselves. Even Terenzio has stopped yelling about his innocence, about how none of them would have survived without him, how much they need him, etc etc. Sylvie almost finds it relaxing, with the quiet in the dimly lit plane and the stars above them.

“Don’t you miss flying in the day?” Mathieu says out of nowhere. Sylvie glances over. Mathieu’s looking out the windshield with a wistful look on his face. “Night flying is one thing, yes it’s always beautiful but…I rather miss flying in the day. The view of the clouds below us, how blue the sky was.” He looks at her.

“Well,” she says. “I never quite got _this_ view.”

“Ah. Right.” He pauses for a moment. “It was nice. Strange to think…”

“Think what?”

“That we might never see the sun again. Even if we survive. We might never see the sun again.”

That brings Sylvie up short. She hadn’t really thought about it. But then again, she hadn’t thought much about the future even before the end of the world started. She’s thinking about the future now. Thinking about survival in a way that’s new.

“Maybe someone will fix this. Or it will just stop. I’m not sure I can imagine the rest of my life without the sun.”

“We’d all go insane.”

“If it ever is fixed,” Sylvie says. “I think I’d like to check out the view from up here. If you’ll still have me.”

Mathieu smiles tiredly. “Of course. Anytime.”

They fly on in silence for a few more hours, Sylvie occasionally checking the radar. When they’ve gotten close, she checks it yet again.

“The storm center’s moved a little east, precipitation’s let up. But there’s still a lot of clouds socked in over the airport.” She shows Mathieu the tablet. “So. What should we do?”

He studies it a moment. “Let’s go for it. It will be turbulent but I think we can make it.”

“If you say so.” Sylvie taps her thumb nervously against the iPad.

“I’ll take the landing this time,” Mathieu assures her. “It will be fine.”

“You sure you’re up for it?”

Mathieu nods. “Can you warn them?” His voice sounds a little rough. Sylvie gives him a closer look but other than the ever-present pallor he looks okay. No sign that the fever’s fighting back against the drugs they’d gotten in Brussels. He looks tired, but coherent.

She takes up the mic. “I’m not going to do it as nice as you would.”

Mathieu laughs. “I think they’re used to that by now.”

“Okay, listen up,” Sylvie says into the mike. “We’re starting the descent. There’s a rainstorm where we’re going to land, so things are going to get a little bit bumpy. Sit down, put on your seatbelt-” Mathieu reaches up and hits the button to turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, out of habit or out of snark, she’s not sure. “-and _don’t_ get back up until we’ve come to a full stop. I’m serious. We’ll keep you updated, but it’s best if you take your seats now.” She hangs up the mike. “Good?”

Mathieu nods. “Good. Descending to 25,000 feet now.” He angles the nose down and they slide into the cloud cover.

The plane hits turbulence almost immediately, dropping hard a couple times through the clouds. Sylvie thinks she hears a shout from the back and Mathieu glances back with a look of concern, but she shakes her head. “We warned them.”

“They had probably gotten caught up arguing about something. Or they have discovered a problem we haven’t even thought off and forgotten to take their seats.” Mathieu shakes his head. “One problem at a time. We need to get onto the ground.”

They clear the clouds to sheets of heavy rain. In the darkness, the visibility is next to nothing. Sylvie can see some blurred lights below and checks their position. They’re just passing the correct waypoint, so as long as everything’s calibrated correctly, they should be on the right path.

Lightning flashes, followed by thunder. God, hopefully they don’t get hit. The last thing they need is interference with their electrical systems, after everything else this plane has been through. Sylvie glances at the radar again, which shows the heaviest precipitation still a little south of their position, and moving further away.

“Do you see the airport yet?” she asks. The last word of her question comes out a little higher pitched than she’d intended as plane drops hard again, slipping down through pockets of turbulent air. She takes a deep breath in and let’s it out through her teeth.

“I think I can see the lights. Those green ones, there.”

Sylvie has to squint but she can just make out lines of light in a dark expanse. “Good.”

“Start calling our altitude. And put down the landing gear.”

“15,000 feet.” She pushes down the landing gear lever. The aircraft sways in the wind, listing from side to side. Sylvie’s getting a little nervous at the choppiness of their descent. She’s obviously had similar descents, under bad conditions in the helicopter but thinks that it shouldn’t really feel like this in an airliner. Mathieu doesn’t look too concerned, though he keeps his grip tight on the controls.

As they pass below 5,000 feet, a wind shear strikes, buffeting them down hard. The sudden, precipitous drop makes Sylvie’s heart leap. Her palm is sweating as she grips the sides of the seat. She glances at the instruments.

“Mathieu, we’re beneath the glide slope-”

“It’s fine, we’ll get it back.” Mathieu says quickly. She sees him steady himself, take a slow breath. His hand is steady as he grasps the controls, sends them high and then lets them drop back onto the proper path.

Sylvie confirms they’re on the right slope. “Okay. Okay.”

“We are _fine_ ,” Mathieu insists.

The winds still buffet the aircraft. Visibility is terrible but thankfully the airport lights are still on and clear, just barely visible through the gloom. The light down the center line is uninterrupted. They can only hope there’s no smaller debris on the runway that could trip them up. Mathieu holds onto the alignment by the skin of their teeth. Sylvie calls out their altitude, follows Mathieu’s instructions, a sequence she’s at least starting to have memorized.

They descend past 500 feet and Mathieu lines them up with the runway lights flickering in the downpour. They’re at a bit of an angle and Sylvie opens her mouth to say something, but Mathieu shakes his head. “It’s okay. We’ve got it.”

At just twenty feet up, the angle straightens out. They’re caught by a wind shear at the last moment and it slams them down hard onto the runway.

The tires groan heavily. Sylvie grits her teeth and engages the brake, pressing down so hard that her knees shake.

“Now we just have to worry about hydroplaning…” Mathieu says.

Sylvie tightens her grip. “Hydroplaning-”

He hits a button and the flaps begin to slow them down. But he keeps his hand tight on the controls. Unthinkingly, he reaches out to put his left hand on the throttle and winces at the movement.

Sylvie puts her hand where his had been and nods. “I’ve got it.”

“Be ready for a failed approach. If we don’t slow down in another hundred feet, open it up.”

But they are already slowing, the wheels finding purchase with the tarmac. The wind against the spoilers roars as they break their speed. The plane rolls to a stop. Sylvie lets out a long breath and powers down the engines. The rain still lashes at the windshield.

“Well. Bit of a hard landing.”

Sylvie laughs, semi-hysterically. “You’re just saying that because you were unconscious in Brussels.” Her hands are shaking. She tries to hide it. The engines wine of the engines slowly fade, leaving behind just the rain and the thunder.

“It was far from the worst, I promise you.”

Jakub appears at the doorway. “Everything alright?” He sounds a bit shaken.

“Perfect,” Sylvie shoots back with a grin of false bravado. “We’re on the ground, yes?”

“There is no way we would have gotten clearance for that under normal circumstances. But we didn’t have much else of a choice.” Mathieu sighs.

“How long do we have before sunrise?” Jakub asks.

“Two hours,” Mathieu says. “Hopefully some of this weather will clear by then.”

Sylvie checks the radar again. “It should lighten up a bit, at least. The storm center is moving east at a good speed. Nothing else coming in behind it.”

“And now we’ll be able to take a better estimate of the wind speeds.” Mathieu checks a dial. 

“I’ll check over the landing gear. It felt like we hit hard and after-” Jakub glances at Sylvie. “I’ll check over the landing gear.”

“Thanks, Jakub.”

“Any news about Bulgaria?” Sylvie asks.

Jakub shakes his head. “Not yet. Rik and Ayaz are still working on it”

“Well, we should have some time to narrow down the coordinates. Depending on how much fuel we can find here, we’ll probably have one more stop on our way around. They’ll have our whole passage across the Atlantic and Russia to get us as close as we can.”

Jakub nods. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.” He pats her shoulder and ducks out to go help the others exit the plane and to fuel up.

“I should go help them find fuel.” But Sylvie doesn’t move. Her legs feel like jelly. She lets out a breath in a long whoosh. Laughs a little. “Just need another second.”

“Take all the time you need. They can handle it. Take a break, Sylvie.” They’re quiet for a minute. “It really wasn’t that bad. You’re doing a good job, you know.”

“Ha. I’m doing my best.”

“Seriously. You landed the plane _alone_. So what if it was a bit hard? Most pilots would have crashed. I probably would have crashed, if you hadn’t been there.”

“Well, you were dying.” Sylvie sighs. “You were right, what you said in Ireland. It just takes time to recover confidence after a rough landing. I’m just still shaky. Only now, I don’t really have time to get over it.”

“Like you said. We’ll only have two more landings until Bulgaria. Until the bunker.”

“Hopefully. As long as we can find the bunker.”

Mathieu looks back out the windshield. “We’ll find it.” He says it like he actually might believe it. They fall silent again. Sylvie still doesn’t quite feel up to leaving the cockpit, or standing on shaking legs.

“We’re not going to crash,” Sylvie says, half to herself.

Mathieu gives her a look “Of course we’re not going to crash, we’ve already-”

“No, it’s…” She doesn’t quite know how to explain what she meant. She’d just been thinking about how sure she was that they were going to crash when they first landed without fuel in Scotland, and how sure Mathieu had been that they wouldn’t. Even in Brussels, when there really was every expectation that she was about to crash the plane, she’d taken a deep breath and amid all her uncertainty, insisted they wouldn’t. Found that certainty in herself that they wouldn’t crash. A moment of peace, of faith in her training and her aircraft.

It was just another hard landing. There would be more to come. And easy ones. Just like always.

She glances over at Mathieu. He hasn’t said anything, waiting for her to gather her thoughts. “Never mind. It was nothing.”

He gives her a small smile.“No. We’re not going to crash.”

“I’m going to go help Jakub.” She gets to her feet. Her legs don’t feel like jelly anymore. “You should lie down in the back for a while,” Sylvie says. “While we wait for the weather to clear.”

They wait a while after fuel-up to takeoff. Jakub gives the plane a thorough once-over. Laura and Horst help Mathieu to walk around a bit, get some fresh air out of the plane. Sylvie gets a headache trying to deal with all the arguments about Terenzio. Everyone is looking at her to decide, but her mind is half in the cockpit, thinking about windspeed and how much fuel they’ll be able to take on. They decide to keep him handcuffed down in the hole and figure out what to do with him once they reach Bulgaria.

When she settles back into her seat in the cockpit, she breathes a sigh of relief. The door is shut, the lights are low, and the rain’s let up, down to just a drizzle. The winds are still a little high, but headwinds so takeoff shouldn’t be a problem.

“Ready for takeoff?” Mathieu says. He looks more tired.

She nods. “Ready.” She puts her hand on the throttle. “Let’s go to Bulgaria.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I keep writing really soft things for this bingo. I usually write very...dark things. I was expecting much worse to come out of my brain for this bingo, but apparently not. I'm sure I'll come up with some more actual whumpy things eventually, but I just had two in a row of soft ideas. 
> 
> And yes, another gift to the Void. I'm just...really into this show. Really liked so many of the character dynamics, in particular I really like Sylvie and Mathieu being pilot bros. So I'm going to keep writing it, even if I'm completely on my own. Not sure if anyone is out there, but...I present this fanfic to the Void. If you _are_ out there, please do leave a comment or [come say hi on tumblr](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/) so I know I'm not alone! <3


End file.
